Grave Situation (11 page)

Slowly, his hand clutched the
blanket to his chin. Maybe only in his dreaming mind he had
imagined the slamming door. He didn’t know the time, but it was
late. His bedroom was in shadows. Moonlight spilled through the
window, stretching weakly to the walls. He heard the furnace switch
on, felt the register near his bed release a current of warm
air.

The boy laid his head back on the
pillow. He turned over, staring up at the ceiling.

After a brief moment, it came
again, as clearly as the catch in his throat—the heavy stomp of a
footstep on the staircase. The house picked up the sound, gave it
resonance. A second step followed, a third, a fourth, all awkward,
all irregular. Then came the sound of stumbling, a pause for
balance, a grunt of obscenity. A brief instant later, the footsteps
resumed.

He was coming. And he was
drunk.

Desperate, the boy’s gaze darted
around the room, looking for escape. His breaths came in quick
shallow gasps. He tossed the blanket aside and lunged off the bed.
He knew the window wouldn’t open. It took the strength of his
father to do that. The frame was wedged tight against the
jambs.

Despite this, the boy ran to it. As
he stared out, his breath condensed on the pane. It was deep winter
and its white cloak made the landscape out back indistinguishable.
A northwest gust kicked up a swirl of snow. The open sky was
stippled with a profusion of stars, their brilliance diminished
only by an overpowering full moon.

Outside the bedroom door the
footsteps were almost to the top of the stairs now.

Near panic, the little boy pushed
up on the window, but it wouldn’t budge. He tried again, arms
shaking.

A crack, nothing more.

He turned and looked around his
dark room. The closet. He ran to it. His face brushed suspended
shirts and pants as he pushed his way through to the wall. Empty
hangers clanged together. He winced at their sound and knelt and
swept shoes aside so he could sit down. When he pulled the door
shut, the darkness became absolute. Beneath him the floor felt
hard, cold. The boy curled his knees to his chest and closed his
eyes.

He began to pray.

“God Most High, have pity on me.
Have mercy. I run to you for safety. In the shadows of your wings,
I seek protection…”

Abruptly, the boy’s eyes snapped
open. There came the creak of a loose floorboard in the hallway,
the groan of the bedroom door as it opened.

Fear crawled over the boy’s skin.
He drew a shuddering breath. All at once, the air seemed to become
close and humid. In the confinement of the closet, he felt trapped,
suffocated. A bead of perspiration rolled down the side of his
face.

When the bedroom light flicked on,
the boy pressed a hand to his mouth, stifling a gasp.

Someone stepped inside. Under the
door, a shadow moved to the middle of the room.

From the silence came a man’s
intoxicated drawl. “Where are you?”

The boy’s heartbeat pounded in his
ears. It was his father, returning from Gary’s Tavern. Many nights
had begun like this. The boy imagined the man hanging off the bar,
drinking glass after glass of his favorite whiskey. Afterward, he
would somehow drive home and then stumble into the house, his mind
poisoned, his rage stoked to the point of bursting.

“Answer me,” the
voice spoke again, angry now.
“Morceau de
merde.
”

Footsteps moved toward the closet.
The shadow changed shapes and then separated into two. Waiting, the
boy swallowed.

Go away.

A rattle of the doorknob. He
pressed his back into the corner of the wall.

Then the door flung open. Blinking
at the sudden brightness, the boy gazed up at his father. Terror
swelled inside him. The man’s face was flushed with liquor and the
blaze of temper. His mouth was an angry slash, his dark soulless
eyes sharp with malevolence. Behind his head, the bedroom light was
like a nimbus.

He was a big man with a thick neck
and arms like tree trunks. He wore a black and red-checkered
flannel jacket that carried the odor of cigarettes.

“You hiding from me, you piece of
shit?”

The boy’s mouth worked at words
that wouldn’t come. He tried desperately not to cry.

The man clutched the front of his
son’s pajama top and yanked the little boy up toward him with a
sudden tug. Faces inches apart, the boy could feel the heat of his
father’s breath, the reeking stench of whiskey. That was how he
knew to be afraid. At any moment, he thought he was going to
vomit.

“Why do you make me crazy, huh?”
the man hissed.

The boy didn’t understand. Too
afraid to move or speak, he could only wait.

“You
disgust
me.”

Without warning, the father
wrenched his son from the closet and threw him across the bedroom
as though he were weightless.

He collided with the night table,
knocking over a lamp. The bulb shattered, flinging shards of glass
everywhere. With a short cry, the boy toppled to the floor. He
flinched at the throbbing ache in his back where it had struck the
table. His eyes began to water. When he raised his head, his father
was a blurred image starting toward him.

“Look at the mess you made,” the
man growled.

The open doorway. If the boy could
reach it, he could escape this. Desperately, he scrambled to his
feet. In spite of his drunkenness, the man was fast. His powerful
hand grabbed hold of his son’s collar and pulled him back into the
room. Glaring down, the man’s eyes took on a feral glint, more
animal then human.

“Morceau de
merde,”
he spat.

As if by reflex, the boy’s arms
came up around his head to protect himself.

“No, Daddy,” he cried.
“No.”

The man raised his hand and the boy
cringed.

“Herbert.
”

The man paused at the voice and
looked up. The boy twisted his head to see. In the doorway stood
his mother, the man’s wife. She was a slender woman in her early
forties. Her shoulder-length flip up hair was disheveled. Her green
eyes looked wary, tired. Without makeup, her face was pale, older
somehow. She wore a robe overtop a nightgown.

“Laisse le
garçon tranquille
,” she
said.

The man lowered his hand. “You just
never mind.”

Slowly, almost tentatively, she
stepped into the room. “He hasn’t done anything.”

The man released his grip on his
son and a tense silence fell upon the room. The boy backed away to
his bed and felt time stop. He watched his father’s
face.

Standing between them, the man
seemed mollified. Under the bedroom light his forehead glistened
with sweat. His gaze shifted from his wife to his son to his wife
again. Then the whiskey seemed to kick start him.

“You baby him too much,” he
said.

“Il est un
bébé.
” The woman took another step
forward, eyes never leaving her husband.
“Il a seulement six ans.
”

The man fixed his son with an icy
stare. Gazing back at him, the boy swallowed. Tears were rolling
down his cheeks.

With a soft
voice, his mother said, “Come to bed, Herbert.” She reached out a
hand to her husband now.
“Come.
”

The man looked at her with a kind
of wonder. He took her hand and allowed himself to be led from the
room. The boy’s mother stopped in the doorway and turned back to
her frightened son.

“Go back to bed,” She flashed a
quick smile of reassurance. “Everything will be all
right.”

Her hand moved to the wall and
flicked off the light. When she closed the door, the boy expelled a
long sigh. The silence that followed was a comfort.

He crawled back under the covers.
The ache in his back still throbbed, his heart still thumped
wildly. After a time, both seemed to ease. He gazed up at the
ceiling with his hands behind his head.

Lower in the sky now, the moon lit
up the room in starker detail.

The boy yawned and rolled to his
side. He was unable to sleep, despite being exhausted. Tomorrow was
not a school day and for that he was thankful. Shutting his eyes,
he tried to drive away the thoughts of his father’s drunken fit and
realized that he couldn’t. At any moment, he imagined the man
bursting into the room again.

Minutes passed. Nothing happened.
Maybe he was safe now.

Then another sound pulled him back
from the twilight between sleep and consciousness. Not a bang this
time, but a sound like a cry. Faint. Somewhat distant.

The boy sat up, listening. He wiped
the scratchiness from his eyes with a knuckle.

It came again.

The cry was from his mother. He
could hear his father’s voice now, saying something he couldn’t
make out. Then came a loud slap and deep wail from the
mother.

At once, the boy pictured his
father beating her, pictured her in the morning, the cuts and
bruises, the swollen lip.

The boy felt sick to his
stomach.

He didn’t know what he could do,
only that he had to stop this. What his father would do to him
didn’t matter; he must save his mother.

He leapt off the bed, mindful of
the scattered pieces of light bulb still on the floor. His hand
closed over the doorknob, yet he couldn’t bring himself to turn
it.

His arm trembled; his mouth was
dry.

From his parent’s room came another
slap from his father, another cry from his mother.

By a sheer act of will, the boy
opened the door slowly to minimize the grate of hinges.

The hallway was dark. But the boy
knew the house by touch. On tiptoes, he approached his parent’s
bedroom, unsure of what he would find, unsure of what would happen.
His heartbeat was fast and heavy.

The door was ajar. Peeking inside,
the boy saw them. There, silhouetted against the window, were their
profiles. His mother was bent over the footboard, hands reaching
towards the head of the bed. Her nightgown was raised above her
waist. Wearing only a T-shirt now, his father was behind his wife,
hips pumping wildly. With each thrust, the boy’s mother emitted a
soft moan.

The boy stood there, unable to turn
away. He watched his father raise his open hand and bring it down
on his wife’s backside. The smack of palm against skin made the boy
flinch. He backed away from the door, unable to understand what was
going on. He crept back down the hallway, footsteps soft so his
parents wouldn’t hear. He climbed into his bed and pulled the
covers to his chin before staring up at the ceiling in the
dark.

He wouldn’t sleep for the rest of
the night.

At the breakfast table the next
morning, it was like nothing had even happened. To the boy, the
events of the night before seemed like a jumble of fragments, half
real, half imagined.

His mother set down plates of eggs,
bacon and toast. His father sipped coffee, not looking at or
speaking to anyone. He seemed engrossed in the newspaper he had
folded on one corner of the table.

Sitting at her place, the boy’s
mother asked, “Herbie, will you say grace for us?”

“Yes, Mama.” He
folded his hands by his plate and bowed his head.
“Bless us, O, Lord and these Thy gifts, which we
are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord.
Amen.”

As he finished,
he heard only his mother repeat the
“Amen.
” His father was
uncharacteristically quiet. The boy looked up and found the man
glowering at him from the other side of the
table.

The boy put his head down once
more. He wanted to leave. Despite having no appetite, he ate his
breakfast quickly. When he finished, he quietly excused himself
from the table and as he did so, he noticed his father do the same.
On his heels, the man followed his son through the living room.
Reaching the staircase, the boy felt a large hand grab hold of his
arm with a vice-like grip. His father spun him around and pressed
his face close to his.

“I know you were there last
night,” he spat.

Eyes wide, the boy felt his heart
beating faster. He winced at the pain sinking into the flesh of his
arm. The man paused and glanced sharply over his shoulder. From the
kitchen came the sounds of his wife putting dishes in the sink, of
running water. The man turned back to his son, his eyes narrowed to
slits.

“Did you enjoy
the show?” Venom dripped from his father’s voice.
“Morceau de merde.”

Herb Matteau awoke with a start.
His muscles were flexed, his hair damp with sweat. It felt as
though he had a hangover—headache, dry mouth, quiescent nausea in
his stomach. The bed was a mess, the sheets and blankets kicked to
the floor.